English: 1. nickname for a gray-haired man, from Middle English grice, gris ‘gray’ (Old French gris, apparently of Germanic origin, and probably a distant cognate of Gray 1). 2. from Middle English grice, grise ‘pig’ (Old Norse gríss, probably akin to 1), hence a metonymic occupational name for a swineherd or a nickname. 3. Possibly an Americanized spelling of German Greis.